BioLogic

John Doench, associate director of the Genetic Perturbation Platform (GPP) and institute scientist at the Broad Institute, and Ruth Hanna, research associate in GPP, discuss how the CRISPR system has revolutionized studies of gene function.

Joel Hirschhorn, institute member and co-director of the Metabolism Program at the Broad Institute and professor of pediatrics and genetics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, sits down with BioLogic to talk about how the research community has approached genome-wide association studies (GWAS) from concept to execution through the last decade.

Broad Institute member Mark Daly, co-director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics, investigator with the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, and chief of the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, describes how modern tools for analyzing the genome have empowered the study of psychiatric disorders.

Genome sequencing may someday become a routine part of medical care, but questions still surround best practices for returning genetic information to patients in a way that will optimally impact their health. Geneticists Robert Green and Heidi Rehm explain their research into developing such protocols, the benefits and risks inherent in providing genetic information, and the uncertain future of legal protections against genetic discrimination.

Nir Hacohen, an institute member at Broad, director of the Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, takes us to the intersection of cancer, immunotherapy, and autoimmune disease to explore how researchers are steering the immune system to fight tumors.

Jim Collins, an institute member at the Broad Institute, a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and a professor at MIT, dives into the social and scientific causes of antibiotic resistance and explains some of what his lab is doing to combat the problem.

In recognition of Rare Disease Day, Anna Greka, an institute member at the Broad Institute, an associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, shares part of her journey as a physician-scientist studying rare kidney diseases and highlights the deep impacts of patient involvement in research.

Hopi Hoekstra, an institute member at the Broad Institute, a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator at Harvard University, and the curator of mammals at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, tells us how her lab combines the genetic, environmental, and morphological traits of wild deer mice to answer questions about evolution and behavior.

Steve McCarroll, an institute member at the Broad Institute, director of genetics for the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Genetics, and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, takes us beyond single base-pair deletions and misspellings to explore variations in the human genome on a structural level. With the analytical tools available today to examine huge lengths of DNA, McCarroll and others are linking these structural differences to human health and our risk of developing diseases such as schizophrenia and cancer.

The largest metagenomic view of the developing world has uncovered “mobile genes” that reveal how culture shapes the human microbiome. Broad Institute authors of the paper, published in the journal Nature, discuss how the study came to be.